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This was a joke [YOUTUBE]s6Ryhh4Ixac[/YOUTUBE] This is serious. What do I think? No idea, I just follow Kenny Dalglish by Matthew SYED I have come to the reluctant conclusion that football fans are little more than lemmings. It is the FA Cup clash at Anfield this month, you see, and the solemn warning that there could be violent clashes between Liverpool and Manchester United fans because of the mutual anger distilled from the Luis Suárez affair. Forums and message boards have been seething, apparently, and in large part because Kenny Dalglish and Sir Alex Ferguson have reacted rather stridently to the Suárez suspension. Fans have become agitated because of the provocative language used by King Kenny, who is outraged by the ban, and Fergie, who has welcomed it. It raises the question: do these fans have minds of their own? Can they not decide whether to be angry, or calm, or flustered, or whatever else without reference to the ageing Scottish managers who happen to be running their clubs? Sadly, we know the answer to this question already. Consider that the authorities are seeking to defuse the situation not with riot police or secret intelligence, but with “talks” (I am not making this up). The idea is that a summit meeting between Ferguson and Dalglish would provide an opportunity to produce soothing noises — and thus bring the lemmings into line. The lemming-like tendency is everywhere in football. Perhaps the most depressing thing about the Suárez affair was not merely the racism, but the sheer predictability with which Liverpool fans parroted the Dalglish shtick. Dalglish responded to the report by proclaiming Suárez’s innocence and, hey presto, tens of thousands of Liverpool fans did exactly the same. Some even wore the T-shirts. Grown men in the Greater Merseyside area spent hours, weeks, becoming expert in the cultural anthropology of South America, the linguistic nuances of Spanish as spoken in Uruguay, and sacrificed precious evenings to pore over a 115-page report to find something, anything, that might bolster a conclusion they had already prejudged. The more they looked, the more blinkered they became. Psychologists call it confirmation bias, but stupidity is, perhaps, a more appropriate word. Had Dalglish told them the sky was purple with yellow dots, they would have looked to the heavens, lemming-like, and said: “Gosh, have you seen the bright colours up there?” And they would have looked askance, perhaps they would even have got angry and questioned the impartiality of anyone who said otherwise. This is the psychological raw material of conspiracy theory, and contemporary football fandom, which is much the same thing. It is probably wise to say at this point that I admire Liverpool Football Club, their traditions, their history. But more than anything else I just feel like saying: grow up. Make your own minds up for a change. Support your club, to be sure, but exercise a modicum of independent thinking. Reacquaint yourselves with the grey matter that you seem voluntarily to relinquish as soon as you walk within 100 metres of Anfield or get together with your mates on those tedious, self-perpetuating forums. It is not just Liverpool fans, of course. United supporters are just as malleable, predictable and idiotic. I once wrote an article suggesting that Ferguson was wrong to hold a multi-year grudge against the BBC, wrong to ban journalists from Old Trafford for having the temerity to ask searching questions and wrong to recall three United players on loan with Preston North End after they sacked his son, Darren. It was a viewpoint that only a demented maniac could disagree with. Or a United fan. Sure enough I got an e-mail from an Old Trafford regular arguing, in gentle and patient tones, that Ferguson’s boycott of the BBC, in defiance of contractual obligations, was a good thing for freedom of speech (yes, really); that throwing journalists out of Old Trafford was a useful corrective to an overweaning media; and that withdrawing three loan players was an uplifting testament to how much Ferguson loved his son. When I replied mentioning the boot Fergie once kicked into the face of David Beckham, he replied that it was a tribute to the Scot’s passion. And that’s the thing. Ferguson could personally massacre every first-born in the Greater Manchester area and United fans would respond with something along the lines of: “What an innovative response to population growth.” These people are simply incapable of divorcing an appreciation of him as a manager from an objective appraisal of his personal defects. Whatever Ferguson says, whatever he does, is simply dandy. And anything Dalglish says is deeply, sinisterly suspect. Of course, not all fans are like this (and thank goodness for that). There are many who wouldn’t dream of being violent towards fans of another team just because two players had got involved in a spat and one of them had been banned. And they would feel this way regardless of what the respective managers said, or what tone they used, and regardless of whether the two clubs got together for “talks”. Similarly, there are United fans who are perfectly capable of eulogising the genius of Ferguson while simultaneously acknowledging his many flaws. The same goes for Liverpool fans. A couple of weeks ago, Tony Evans, football editor of The Times and Liverpool devotee, wrote an outstanding piece on the Suárez affair. He argued that the behaviour of Liverpool FC was rather at fault in the aftermath of the judgment, using common sense and rationality to make his inarguable case. He was applauded by pretty much everyone within the game, including many fellow Liverpool fans. But he was also (rather predictably) vilified by the one-eyed brigade on Merseyside. Football will only come of age when the very idea of a summit meeting between two clubs is met with gales of laughter rather than solemn assent. When fan forums are made up not of ramshackle conspiracy theories, mindless abuse and paranoid delusions, but sensible debate about the club, their players and their transfer policy. When we are able to infer a fan’s allegiance not by his kneejerk bias, or by his dog-whistle response to whatever the latest messiah or manager says, but by his diligence and devotion. Until that time, we must acknowledge that many fans are more like lemmings than rational human beings with brains of their own. And this is why a summit meeting between Liverpool and Manchester United makes perfect sense: so that the lemmings among us can be told what to do. Can you tell the two apart?